by MATTHEW HAYS

Phone Booth is one of those loony concept movies that is so implausible, so unbelievable, that it actually manages to work despite its ridiculousness.

The premise is pretty simple: sleazy New York publicist type (here played by Irish stunner and star flavour of the month Colin Farrell) is working on young aspiring actress in the hopes of having an affair. Since he doesn't want his wife to find out about phoning the young lass (the calls will show up on his cell bill), he phones her instead from a call box, the very same one, every morning at a set time. One morning, Farrell's sleazy phone work is interrupted when someone phones him at the booth; he soon learns a sniper is watching him, capable of taking him out at any moment. Someone is shot nearby; when the police arrive, they assume Farrell has the gun, unaware of the sniper's existence. Meanwhile, Mr. Sniper is having a field day taunting Farrell, forcing him to do and say all sorts of embarrassing things.

It's an odd little hallucinogenic film, a sadomasochistic gaze into one man's emotional meltdown as he is tormented about his own sleazy underpinnings and the dark side of his character.

Surefire screenplay

Joel Schumacher, the man behind such Hollywood blockbusters as Batman Forever and The Client, says he was immediately drawn to the Phone Booth screenplay upon reading it. "It was unlike any movie I'd ever seen," he says, from a San Francisco hotel room. "I thought it was entirely fresh. It dealt with urban paranoia. It also dealt with paranoia about our loss of privacy. The thing is, we used to be paranoid about our loss of privacy - now we know we've lost it completely. People have a lot of information about us, like it or not."

Part of the film's sheer creative nuttiness is due to its screenwriter, legendary cult filmmaker Larry Cohen. "He's definitely an original, that's for sure," Schumacher says of Cohen. Cohen, of course, wrote and directed a series of bizarrely inspired horror movies in the '70s and '80s, including God Told Me To, Stuff and the It's Alive trilogy, as well as making essential contributions to the Blaxploitation genre. "I'd always been a fan of Larry's, but I'd never met him. He was very supportive throughout the making of the film."

Schumacher says part of the Phone Booth script's brilliance is the primal fear we all share of a disembodied voice. In this case, Farrell and the audience are kept clueless as to who this man is, sounding a bit like the cousin of the disembodied phone-crazy stalker in the Scream trilogy. "If a friend calls us and disguises their voice, our first reaction is generally annoyance - there's nothing worse than not knowing who's on the other end of the line.

"And usually, that voice is tormenting a teenage girl babysitter who's out in a cottage in the middle of the woods somewhere," adds Schumacher. "What's really horrifying about this is that Colin's stuck in a glass booth in the middle of a massive city in front of tons of people and cameras. And yet he can't leave, he's imprisoned there, by this voice." Phone Booth got some press when its release date was bumped from last year to this month, due to Fox Studio's reluctance to launch the film during or directly after the D.C. sniper shooting spree. Contrary to rumour, Schumacher was not annoyed with the date shift. "No, in fact I would have been put off, disgusted, if they'd decided not to put it off. If anything, the delay helped us, as now more people know who Colin is."

And a big part of the tension built up in the film has to do with Farrell, who delivers an excellent performance as an asshole publicist type turned victim. "Colin had to play an arrogant dickhead, and he did that very well indeed. And that Bronx accent is flawless. In Tigerland [Schumacher's previous film], Colin did a perfect southern accent for me."

Reality bites

Schumacher says he recognized right away that Cohen's script was outlandish, but still managed to tap into a series of essential and primal fears held almost universally by audiences. The director says he carved out a style of "reality on steroids," by "pumping it up," using fast camera movements, rapid cutting in the editing room and an emotive cast to help to create and build up tension throughout the film. "I thought about a previous film I'd made, Falling Down [Schumacher's '93 vigilante movie]. In the beginning of that movie, Michael Douglas is trapped in his car in a traffic jam on a stiflingly hot day. Through Michael's great acting, editing and close-up shots, the audience gets the feeling that they're trapped in the car with him. I thought of that while trying to create the sense that the audience is trapped with Colin in that phone booth."

Despite widespread industry bitching about research audience testing, Schumacher says the night they tried out Phone Booth turned out to be a serious shot in the arm for him. "There were 200 people there, and almost the whole movie takes place in a phone booth, and at that time Colin was an unknown. I really had no idea how people would respond. I wasn't even sure people would stay through to the end. But you could hear a pin drop. No talking, no bathroom breaks, no candy wrappers crinkling, no cell phones! The edge-of-your-seat part of the movie was working. When the focus group was asked about what was working in the film, they responded that the scariest part of it all was that this could happen to anyone. It's as accessible as a phone call, and being surrounded by big-city skyscrapers with lots of windows. Who can't relate to that?"

Outrageous oeuvre

As for Phone Booth relating to Schumacher's filmography, it doesn't quite, but then again, nothing does. The man has directed 18 features, and the list is nothing if not varied, from a couple of the Batman movies to the low-budget Tigerland to that mass birthing of the brat pack, St. Elmo's Fire. Does Schumacher ever get frustrated by his being perceived as a largely commercial director? "Hey, I'm just happy to be perceived. I started out making 200 bucks a week as a costume designer, hoping to be a director some day. Now I've made 18 features. I feel privileged. I work with great people. I feel grateful, if anything.

"When I was growing up, we didn't really know who directors were. We knew who Hitchcock was, but that's because he was on TV. The directors weren't people who were known or thought of by the public. I think Spielberg had a great deal to do with changing that. I mean, now, people actually pay attention to who directed a film. I was walking around San Francisco last night and young people were coming up to me and saying they'd seen films of mine and wanted to discuss them. That's thrilling, not on an ego level, but rather that I love movies and I've actually managed to make movies that some people have really liked." (And what I thought must have been a typo wasn't - yep, that was Schumacher who wrote Car Wash, the strange little cult movie about - what else? - a car wash, that stars Richard Pryor. Does Schumacher have the kitschiest CV in Hollywood history or what? "I'm proud of that film," he insists. "No one thought it would work - we showed them! Now there's talk of turning it into a Broadway musical, by the same people who turned The Full Monty into a stage hit.")

And it must be noted that Schumacher has worked openly as a gay man in Hollywood for decades, something he reports has never been an impediment. At least as far as he knows. "If prejudice has been a problem, I'm not aware of it. It must have been behind my back - it's never been to my face. But you know, I'm a big opponent of labels. African-American judge, Jewish vice presidential candidate, lesbian congresswoman, transgendered military officer, whatever. I don't recall anyone referring to Bill Clinton as our Caucasian, heterosexual, WASP male ex-president. In other words, he's normal and everyone with a label isn't.

"I just feel like labelling's a really bad idea. I'd rather be known as a filmmaker who happens to be gay than a gay filmmaker."

Phone Booth opens Friday, April 3

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